The Parish

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The campaign involves traveling from The Waterfront to a military helicopter evacuation point on the far side of The Bridge.

On leaving Virgil's boat at the Waterfront Market, it is immediately evident that the city has been overrun with Infected and that the military has begun to execute a plan to abandon it entirely, covering their retreat with aerial bombing.

To complete the campaign, the Survivors must make their way through the Infected-infested city, traversing not only a memorial park but an overrun evacuation center, impound lot, bombed out freeway, and cemetery. The Bridge finale is particularly challenging as it obliges Survivors to fight their way across the bridge in the face of rapidly spawning waves of Infected.

If successful, players are rewarded with a military helicopter evacuation and a cut scene depicting the bridge being blown up.

Early Poster. Note Coach's Blue and Yellow Shirt and the blood on Ellis's Shirt along with it being Blue on the Sleeves and White on the main part.

A map of the campaign which spans from The Waterfront to The Bridge.

In common with Dead Center and Dark Carnival, The Parish featured the new "Gauntlet Crescendo," wherein the Horde spawns continuously until an alarm is deactivated.

The Parish was the first campaign unveiled at E3 2009.

The tagline of this campaign has been changed at least twice. First time it was seen with "This time it all goes south" tagline, but then used "Welcome to the Big Uneasy" only to change back to "This time it all goes south".

The second tagline would be a reference to the unofficial name for New Orleans, "The Big Easy".

The Bridge depicted in this campaign is most likely based on the I-10 Bridge located on the Mississippi river a few miles upriver from New Orleans. However, the real bridge is not a Double Decker bridge as depicted in game, rather it is a four-lane Highway and two-lane Railway bridge.

It could also be based on the Lake Ponchatrain Causeway. The lengths of the bridges are largely similar, although the real life bridge is not double-decker.

Notably, when the campaign was first seen, different music is used. Its leftovers can still be found in the "mob" folder of the game music's folder. It's called easygerm (other campaigns being called mallgerm, fairgroundgerm, plankgerm, milltowngerm and parishtmpt) and is significantly deeper and creepier than the music that's currently used.

The beta version of this campaign combined the first two levels (The Waterfront and The Park) together. Also, the crescendo of the second level was somewhat changed. Instead of entering a simplistic CEDA trailer, the Survivors entered a sanitation center, which would spray them with a mist of some sort, and sound an alarm. The map is still in the game files and is playable through the "map c5m1_waterfront_sndscape" command in the console. [1]

At the start of the Bridge Chapter, if you hang out by the radio without answering it, the military radio chatter will start commenting on your presence.

The name "The Parish" comes from the fact that instead of using the word County for divisions of a state, Louisiana uses the word Parish.

The tagline "This time it all goes south" references the phrase "go south", meaning to head south to escape conflict or pursuit, which is what the Survivors do. Also "going south" may refer to something that goes bad or not as planned.

On the campaign poster, one can see that it says "Produced by Tharmy Burns-Bridges", referring to the finale.

CEDA and Worker Infected spawn in this map in the kitchen building, but only in the Developer Commentary Mode.

Also, according to several audio clips of the Developer Commentary, this campaign was the first one ever built for Left 4 Dead 2; as its crescendo events, props, mazes, and the jukebox were the first ones made within its chapters.